What
difference is there between the burning Sun and the blood in our veins? Both are
fundamental to our survival, and are completely out of our control. We consider
blood a part of our self, because we hold it inside of our bodies; but the Sun is just as
much a part of our lives and experience. In this way, is the Sun not just as
much a part of ourselves? Are we not a part of it?

“A man asked me to write to Rome about him, a man who, as most people thought, had been unfortunate, for formerly he was a man of rank and rich, but had been stripped of all, and was living here. I wrote on his behalf in a submissive manner; but when he had read the letter, he gave it back to me and said, “I wished for your help, not your pity: no evil has happened to me.”

“What do you think that Hercules would have been if there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and boar, and unjust and bestial men, whom Hercules used to drive away? And what would he have been doing? Is it not plain that he would have wrapped himself up and slept? In the first place, then, he would not have been Hercules, when he was dreaming away all his life in such luxury and ease.”

“Through this kinship with the flesh, some of us become like wolves, faithless and treacherous and mischievous; some become like lions, savage and bestial and untamed; but the greater part of us become foxes. For what else is a slanderer and a malignant man than a fox, or some other more wretched and meaner animal? See then and take care that you do not become one of these miserable things.”